ello all,
I own this domain with FB and Twitter handles. I acquired this domain to make revolutionary directory system for product/service pricing with availability. I tried with ready made themes and plugins which are available in Themeforest. I ran this website around 10 months but i felt i am not moving towards right direction so I pulled down the website.
My focus is to create the locality based pricing website, it is some what similar to Dunzo but it covers almost all the categories. For this i need to create strong vendor app to facilitate vendors to upload their products/services with pricing with option to toggle the stock in / out of stock. Second, displaying offer deals in front of search so that customer make purchases. More discount merchant offer more the sales they will get.
For physical product we can offer toggle option to stock in / stock out. Same kind of process we need to give service providers either it could be based on calendar or toggle button.
Each product category and services has different kind of fields so we need to create different modules for each category. For example, if we offer call driver service then we need to capture their start time and end time and based on the time our system need to produce the bill. So every modules requires some unique algorithm or formula so that we need to create strong vendor app to make this possible.
Currently there are tons of deal finder websites, what all they do is, pulling the feed from online marketplace websites and display but pricefinder.in focus only on local shops/service providers which has much demand now.
How much does it cost and How long it will take to create this system?
I wanted to go with modules based system so that we can start with most needed categories first and then we can add number of categories based on revenue model.
It required 10+ Months and 250000+ USD to develop this website. In Indian currency, it will cost around 2 Crore rupees.
Vendor app is not just app but it is POS software
You may wonder why it cost this much of amount to create the vendor app. Vendor app is not just app but it is POS system to let vendors use our POS to their shop so that we can sync their inventory on both offline and online stores.
For stores, it will act as a POS but for the services it will act as PM tool where services are like tasks and charge hourly rate so that vendor app will have multiple categories and multiple modules.
We are living in the data world. All things are based on data. Once you add the data it can be processed in backend and can create amazing results. For example, based on the vendor inputs for the pricing, we can store them and process to show pricing history. We can trigger the email/sms based on the customer wishlist if the price is reduced. We can implement tons of useful things here.
Last mile delivery system needed to PriceFinder.In?
I came across this comment on gadget360.com
TechArc chief analyst, Faisal Kawoosa says,
New apps in such businesses come with a less fee charging model to on board. But at the same time, while this does get partners, what is critical is to get the order bookings, which in this instance Zomato and Swiggy are doing well, and restaurants won’t mind paying more as long as they get orders consistently. In short while it’s a good hook, it does not ensure success.
Yes he is right. New apps that focus on POS and independent website can get good response from restaurent or retail owners but not from customers. The reason is, restaurent aggegreter has strong last mile delivery system which helps them to get more order for restaurents. People belive the Swiggy and Zomoto for their delivery system. They don’t want to install apps for each restaruent. Few years back, Dominos had their own app and did not listed in any aggregator website but now i can see them in aggregator. Can you see the reason?
PriceFinder focus on POS and Website same like independent apps but the name suggests that we aggregate all the products in frontend based on customer search queries. So, we plan to give three things
1. Strong POS
2. Website for Merchants
3. Pricefinder.in for searching across merchant stores
Last mile delivery system is not included yet in pricefinder.in as of now.
If you are interested to discuss further please contact [email protected]
I have created a small gallery to explain how call driver can benefit from our PriceFinder platform.
6 of 17
Targeting on-demand services:
I would like to mention few points regarding the service industry. What obstacles they have in their field and what is the solution for it.
Just imagine the Uber app where the company/app automatically assigns the driver. Not just Uber but all the booking service apps automatically assign the professionals. In these scenarios, professionals don’t get enough attention even though they are good in their professions and getting good reviews. I just wanted to get my way around this process. Professionals can add their profile, services, pricing, availability. These listings can be viewed on mobile or web based on their neighbourhood. Once customers find the suitable professionals they can book the professionals right away.
This app/web portal acts as a bridge between the professionals and customers. We would need some professionals and they could be in the next street but could not identify. Even though we identify and call them, they cannot be available at the moment. We don’t know about their charges, reviews etc so there is a large gap between the customer and professionals. We would like to fill this gap with a meaningful app PriceFinder.
By using this app, we facilitate the professionals to expose their skill, reviews, pricing to a general audience that helps customers to find the right person at the right time for their needs. In Chennai, i have met call drivers who were frustrated by the current process, even though they are good they cannot get enough business. They have to pay 1500 per month, for this they will get the lead from the company.
What I am thinking is, when professionals are in a financially tight position, they can reduce the rate as they want to get the work immediately so it is beneficial for both professionals and customer. By adding the review system, customers can choose their pro with peace of mind.
For what categories we can do the first:
Call drivers
Electricians
Plumbers
AC Service
Home Service
Gig Service
Doctors
Content Writers
Logo designers
Web developers
Freelance professionals
Mechanics
For each category, some fields are unique so we have to split the groups under major categories. For example, call drivers require start time and end time fields. For Electricians, they will go product wise like AC, Fridge etc. Gig service is based on From To address fields. Content writers are based on page count.
Usually there will be a question on this scenario, what happens if one company has multiple professionals. Are we going to just list the company name without mentioning professionals ? Yes companies need to list the professionals individually but they will work under company labels. All the payment will go to the company instead of individuals but reviews are for each one. We will show the aggregate review score for the company.
Our main aim is to let the workforce expose the profession without any issue. If you are skillful then you will get the work.
We will list all the professionals on our website PriceFinder.in. Based on the location visitors can see the professionals and book directly into the website.
For customer privacy, we need to mask the customer phone number and customer details it prevents customer’s confidential details from being misused. We can integrate the Freshdesk support system for customer support tickets through API.
What happens when we show the professional details in public, will the customer not directly call the profession without our website and book the service off the site?
In the data world, we cannot hide any information. I am fine to share the professional information in public and visitors can contact them through off the site which is not a problem. Here we mention one thing : we add the professional details for the payment which is a monthly subscription so as long as they are active paid professionals we can let both customer and professional contact off the site. The main thing here is, we need to provide the value to that customer which will not be available with that professional without our tools.
We verify the professional personally and we will have all the details of that Pro but end users are not aware of these details so we have to plant the thing in the customer’s head that booking through our website is safe and professional has accountability for all his work.
I have had the same experience twice personally. One is home cleaning. I booked the service through the company via phone call. They partnered with neighbourhood home cleaning service providers and passed the order details to them. After visiting our home, service professionals insisted that I cancel the order, then they will do the work for less cost whatever company quoted and I agreed on the price. I was convinced and started the work. After work was completed, they were asking for more money than we agreed. I had no way other than giving them extra money as their behaviour is not good. Second one is, I booked the small truck to carry the wood things within 2 kilometres. They insisted that I cancel the order and they will do the work privately. In that work I paid around 5 times whatever I booked through the app so I had a bitter experience when contacting the service professionals without any marketplace that is why I wanted to give the app.
Are you connecting to the Gig worker on this app?
Yes we have. When professionals no longer need to visit customer places then we will completely hide the customer name, address and phone number so it is best for customers to use the Gig community without exposing their identity.
What is a Gig worker and what is their work?
I will explain with a small example. I wanted to know about the ‘Unlimited’ showroom located in Virugambakkam to check whether the showroom has the ‘Ruggers’ brand shirt on size XL. I am here in Madipakkam. If I visit the showroom then it will take me 2 hours of time. If it is not available then it will be a big disappointment and waste of time. In this scenario, imagine if you can contact a Gig worker who is located near Virugambakkam and check the brand name and size and can send the photo to you asap. You will spend 50 or 100 for the useful information because he saved you the effort. Apart from this virtual help, we can use them to purchase the product and reach them to customers. So, Gigworkers are a useful addition to the app.
Physical offices:
Online marketplace always will have a small office which is hardly 10×10 space around 100 sq ft. We need to start the physical office a few locations wherever our service is applicable. This small office is used as a hub point for professionals for reporting or to make joining processes.
Only one centralised call centre : This call centre is used to get phone leads from customers. Also it is the centre point for all phone related customer and professional queries.
Monetization:
We plan to charge around 1500/month for listing the professional details. This includes the App/Dashboard access to Pro where they can add their availability through calendar, set the prices, see the orders, payout details. For services alone for each locality in Chennai, we can have around minimum 50 Professionals. So, it comes around 75000 per month. There are around 50 localities in Chennai city. If we calculate around 50K then for 50 localities we can get 25L per month. Each locality is run under a local office and we can easily target the profit and account for each office to make sure everything is going fine.Also if the local office does not achieve the target then the head office team will increase the focus to that local office.
What are the immediate features we need to add after the first phase is completed?
As we are getting around 1500 per month we need to give some tools to service professionals to run their business smoothly. Here I introduce the POS system specially designed to service professionals. There they can use this software for billing systems for their office purpose. No need to maintain two softwares. It will be mainly given to service professionals to increase the dependency on PriceFinder. Also we need to make sure their availability should be synced to our system so that we need to supply this POS to Professionals and companies.
What is the next feature you like to implement?
As our website name suggests, we need to bring our system to physical stores like grocery stores, jewellery stores, hardwares, cell phone showrooms etc. The only one thing they bring to us is supplying the POS system to their store like how we give the professionals companies. Once the retail store uses our POS, inventory will be synced to our system so price and availability is transparent to customers that will help to buy without any hesitation.
Is there anything else in your mind related to PriceFinder?
Yes 🙂 It is the last one. We have a marketplace where we show the client’s store’s inventory with a purchase option. We gave POS to clients to manage their business themself. So, catalogue is ready then we need to let them create an online store with already created catalogue in just click. Voila. It is a POS+Marketplace+Online store that is the dream for me.
Dotpe.in is our competitor :
1. You might be confused what kind of platform it is called. You can relate this idea to ‘o2o commerce’.
2. In India, there is a Dotpe company but they concentrate only on restaurants. For example this restaurant implemented their solution https://chopnstixmadipakkam.com/ They provide POS and Payment solutions to restaurants and they map the domain to catalog to facilitate online customers to order the food.
3. Dotpe started in Covid time and penetrated in India very well. This is the one of the companies backed by Google.
4. What is the drawback for this Dotpe is, they don’t have a marketplace like how we planned to have. Also their business is vertical to products and restaurants not services.
5. Each individual or company service providers looking for leads or business. When we give them POS and marketplace then it will be a game changer. Our PriceFinder name is generic one so we can provide our tools to any business type.
6. As I said in the document, we can target the professional services first because it is the demand now and there is no competitor at the moment.
7. As a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) we can create a product with limited functionalities. Based on the revenue model we can increase the functionality.
Omni Channels :
Dotpe provides features that shop owners can use in daily manner such as POS, Website which are fine. For the business running on retail space needs to have another important thing. That is phone. Why i am saying about the importance of phone is, when customer calls to enquire about their order, client has no clue and no details in hand to tell them about the order details.
Think if contact center is managed by seperate team, in that situation online, pos order and customer details needs to be integreted to telephony system. To impress the customer with all the details on popup while ringing would be fantastic. Your support team don’t need to jump between online store and call. Now a days, telephone systems connnects most of the major ecommerce platforms but integretion between pos+online store+telephony contact center would be difficult. If we add this feature that would be amazing to lure the customer base. The other important feature is missing in Dotpe is, support ticket. Support can be through call or mail.
Also customers would like to manage those support tickets for specific orders so if we provide the support ticket option under each order in online store that would be amazing addition. If we provide customer complete system to run including pos+online store+support system +contact center that would be more than enough for businesess without depending another vendor.
Targeting D2C:
D2C businesses are getting noticed by consuers in India, may be it is the reason, shopping experience is changed by people based on the unique style. They are moving towards to startup brands instead of luxury one due to pricing factor. Now a days startup D2C are opening their store to target niche customers so it will be easier for stores to attract specific set of customers who are in line with taste.
What is the scope for PriceFinder by D2C:
As they have limited resources and limited stock to sell, they need to properly manage their customers details and need to send promo mails and importantly they want to show their stocks to customers online and offline in beautiful way. Being a startup company they need to forecast all the details such as human resource, infrastructure expense, accounts etc so they need to have proper tool to manage all these things.
In addition to that, they need to have tool which succeed their business so that they can depend on that tool. The tool which facilitates store owners to manage their offline business technologies such as billing, stock maintaence, hr, crm needs to omnichannel to catch the customer in online as well so the tool need to travel to online, marketplace, social media, promo emails as well. For this PriceFinder is good fit for D2C.
The Pricefinder is not just providing tool to manage the online and offline it has more than that task, that is it needs to fullfill the end customer requirement on the fly. Be it is same day delivery or next hour delivery, giving them loyalty points, offering stores to run give away program to surprise the customers on frequent intervel to sustain customer base etc. Primarily, product or service needs to be reached to end user in next hour that is what PriceFinder comes to scene here.
As i said earlier our business model is based on locality because if i want product or service in next half hour, i could not wait for day or two. Client can fullfill their wishes in few minutes not hours that is the main thing of our product that is what we provide the Pricefinder marketplace to list all the products that available in clients physical store. Once end user search the product based on the locality they find the product quickly about where it is available and can book the item quickly to get them in few minutes.
Our main aim is, helping the end users in urgent situation.
OK, now comes to point regarding the D2C business, they have all the tools from PriceFinder but what happen if there is no business at all. It is no use, is not it?
To rectify this, our PriceFinder system provides way to businesses to promote their products through our marketing tools. As a startup company, they wont have customer base but we will have customer base through our marketplace so we will send the promotion mails to our customers who ever interested in the same kind of products. By using this method, we help businesses to identify their customers.
Contactless Food Ordering – Dine in
– During the Covid this contactless food ordering has begun to avoid giving menu card to customers and to avoid the server contacts to tables.
– If you look at this model, you can see that this method is still needed even after covid is over because by using this method customers can see the pictorial menu and can order without asking to attender what is available and when it will be served. All the details will be available in webpage.
– The cost for food is crystal clear there will not be any surprise billing after finishing the dinner.
– You don’t need to stand in long que to pay for items instead you can sit which ever table available and scan the qr code to start the booking. You can pay through online.
– It reduces billing people and servers. With only few employees restaurent can run the business succesfully using this method.
– After finished dinner you can add the review immediatly which will be reilable if you upload the food photos along with review and it will be helpful for other customers.
Essential to small service shops:
Problems:
– Small service shops such as printing, photocopy, flight ticket booking, train ticket booking, mobile recharge, bus ticket booking, Aadhar change, ration card change, DTP works etc usually don’t maintain customer records, may be it is the reason as they only charge very minimal fees for it and customer won’t like to give his personal phone number to avail this, so there is transaction done without getting any customer details and also customer not leaving any records to merchant.
– For these kind of shops, there are two or three employees will be hired who knows DTP so they must have knowledge on computer. The shop owner will not have any record on daily transaction, daily expense, so, it is hard to store owner to see the profit and loss and will not have idea where he is going down and which area he needs to improve in his business. Also owner needs to write down about the leave of employees.
– There will not be no proper purchase order history and vendor lists to maintain the accounts to tally the income and expense.
– They target around 20 to 30K for each month so they can spent small amount of money to manage the business but it should resolve all their problems.
Solution:
– We need to admit that DTP and small service shops cannot ask the customer phone number to manage the customer history. Also what will they do after getting phone number? will they send the promotion mail? Yes there might be possiblity so that customers don’t share the personal phone number to non essential shops or services.
If you look at the customer perspective it might be valid reason but if you look at the other perspective, if customer needs to print the passport size photo then they need to send it to mail. If they want to print other cards they need to carry the pan card, aadhar card, ration card etc so these essential things needs to be handy when visiting these small service stores.
To rectify this issue, PriceFinder needs to introduce the ‘Digital Vault’ feature. As a PriceFinder customer you can upload soft copy of any documents in your profile. If your vendor shop uses PriceFinder POS software then you can share the specific document with the vendor. This file will have dynamic url and it cannot saved by vendor. Also this url will not work once printing is done. By introducing this feature, customer need not to worry about their sensitive document leakage to others.
– As a PriceFinder customer, they will have minimal foot print to the service shops so , we protect the customer privacy here.
– As a PriceFinder vendor, you don’t need to manage the email to get the customer printing documents. Also once you are powered by PriceFinder then customers will prefer to go to that shop as they have vault feature with them.
– Merchant can log the income with customer name, timing. The invoice will be saved to customer profile in PriceFinder
– Merchant will have HR feature to manage the employee log hours. By using these log hours merchant can release the salary.
– Merchant can log the purchase history and expenses in PriceFinder POS so that they can see the what is profit and loss.
Privacy Protection:
– Vault is best one to protect the privacy of our customer. Users will decide which one to share to with whom.
– As PriceFinder platform has all the customer details, merchants don’t need to worry about it.
– Customer phone numbers are masked so that customer original number will not shown instead it will shows dummy number to merchant. Merchant cannot get customer original number. It will protect unnessary acts.
– For delivery purpose, address can be visible to merchant until delivery is done. Once it is one then delivery address will be hidden for customer privacy.
– As we are platform, we have to protect our customer details as much as possible.
Getting website builder customers to PriceFinder:
Now Wix, Squarespace and Shopify provides website builder service by using that clients can create the websites based on the templates they provide. The website plan is available at cheaper plan. If you look at the Wix they provide monthly fee Rs.500 for ecommerce sites. But what is the use of providing just online store for cheap rate. Clients wants basic tools to run their business. These website builders don’t give basic POS software for billing purpose, also there is no marketplace for them to list the clients product list to boost the sales. We, PriceFinder starts with POS software and marketplace first to boost the sales for merchants and then we provide the website to list the clients catalog.
Why we insist the marketplace is more important for merchant is, when we develop and give the website to them, website needs to create some leads to merchants otherwise it is waste of money to have a website for them. Instead of promoting the client websites, we need to boost our SEO for pricefinder.in alone because once the users reach pricefinder.in they can navigate to locality and find the service provider or shop so that we provide leads or business to that merchant. When we look at the Dotpe merchant’s website https://chopnstixmadipakkam.com/ we can see that it is basic one without any about us page or any other pages because Dotpe business model is Online to offline or viceversa. Once you visit the restaurent physically then you will be given option to book the items thorugh the QR code at table, QR will redirect to website and then customer book the order and then pay from the table so now Dotpe introduce the offline customers website through QR code. When you pay for the order, they will get the phone number and other details to send the promotion or newsletter so anyway creating the online store is secondary to Dotpe so same kind of technique is followed by PriceFinder. For us we are going to QR code option and customers can book the food through website and pay the order through phone. In addition we are giving the marketplace to list the restaurents food which will help the merchant to get more orders.
Do you know why restaruents and shops are hesitant to open the online store because aggregagors such as Swiggy, Uber eats changed the way of cusomer behaviour by listing the all the restaruents through their website or order. It is easy to customers to find the food fast and book through the one app instead of visiting different restaruent websites to check the availablity and order the food. Until few year ago, Dominos not joining on any of these aggregators app and websites but situation is changed now. Now they are also joined in Swiggy because they loose the customer and business to stick with seperate website and order system.
Aggregators not only just use platforms to enter into this business but they have strong the last mile delivery system. Their core business model is building technology with last mile delivery system. Restaruents not having that much of resources to deliver the order, even though the Dominos tried to run the delivery system seperately they cannot able to manage the large amount of orders to delivery so it is proven method that if business gets more orders then they should find the delivery people. When third party aggregators provides more business and taking care of deliveries merchants feels that they are freed from these online order and delivery, they just need to concentrate on foods or products.
Do you know why the food aggregators are dominating the disrupting the food industry because food has to be delivered in next 10 or 30 mins otherwise it will loose the hot and taste. So, it is proven that merchants are afraid delivery the food quickly so that they go with aggregators. Now the same footprint is followed on other industries. For example, Grocery shops, vegetable shops, medicines, house services are delivered within one hour.
We at PriceFinder runs the marketplace same as aggregators what is the difference is , it is not just for vertical but it has more categories. Users can navigate the service just by navigating the locality and book the order and avail the service in next 30 or 1 hour. So, building the strong the POS for merchants and Marketplace is essential instead of creating the online store for merchants.
Q & A – Why PriceFinder marketplace is better than standlone website
-Why marketplace and pos is better than website:
Website requires much time to get traffic and need to spent lots of money on digital marketing but result is not sure.
-What is the obscatle merchant having now?
Merchant loose hope on website. First they create and then once they not getting enough leads then shutdonw the website.
-They are ready to spend lead generation directory website because for the money spent they can get some leads.
-Can he do the digital marketing to promote his website?
Even they do digital marketing, they need to do CRO to increase the conversion rate which requires big team effort and cost. In short span of time, it is not possible to get revenue.
-Can they do brand awareness to people?
Yes that is obstacle to merchants. Even they build the website and social network for their brand, people needs to be identify them.
– Even Dominos came to marketplace to get business in addtion to the own website so you can understand the power of marketplace website.
– We just need to SEO and Digital marketing for PriceFinder alone.
-Dotpe not doing any digital marketing instead they provide tools to businesses. Stores introduce the online store to merchant and customer came know to know about the merchants website
-We, at PriceFinder provide the tools and we provide the marketplace to give more business. What Dotpe is missing is marketplace, we can provide that.
– In our locality, there are number of call driver service provider, no body has the app. They are following the drivers through phone and payment is done by cash. Still they earn good money. When we do the business with proper tools then we can attract all those businesses easily.
-Even Doctors are afraid of loosing new customers so they are registered with Practo marketplace and this website just list the doctors with appointments option. They give the doctors and clinic app to manage their avaialble time so that it will reflect in front end. Slowly, they got more fund from Venture capitals and keep adding more features.
– Niche is good idea but what i think is, when we do one app it will be matched across industries so why should not introduce to them. We will get more subscription revenue. Also we need to note that we have to capture the market as quick as possible because other clone apps will come quickly so it is better to go with wider categories to reach as much as people.
– My aim is to make use of our app in daily manner. From FMCG products to Home services we should cover the categories. For each locality in metropolitan city like Chennai,
– My target is just to capture around 100 subscribers in each locality in Chennai city. We can charge around 1500 for one month subscription. Even we capture as low as 1000 customers in Chennai it comes around 15L for one month. It is just one metropolican city.
PriceFinder idea is matching for Healthcare
1. Locum GP are professional, GP Surgery are customers.
– If GP Surgery has a vacancy then they can hire the Doctors from the listing.
– If GP Surgery is hurry and wanted to hire the Locum Doctor then they can send their requirement through app or website. Our automation system will push the job posting to the related Locum Doctor in particular radius so they can apply for that job. Here apply means accepting the offer.
2. Locum GP can see all the job opening posted by GP Surgery by visiting their profile page. All these job posting will have date, time, hourly rate. Based on that Locum GP can send their offer to Surgery.
3. Surgery can see all the job resumes applied for the vacancy. They can accept or reject as they wish.
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4. This GP surgery and Locum GP is unique module in this pricefinder. I match this with, company where group of professionals working. Once their employee takes holiday or go to vacation then that company can fulfill this position temporarily with others.
5. Yes, we can use this module in India also. There are 24/7 hospitals where there are demands for doctors. They can use temporary doctors when regular doctor is on leave.
6. Based on the doctors leave, hospitals can post their jobs in website and doctors can apply for that job based on hourly rate.
7. The same module can be used to any institutions who has bigger infrastructure and need to fulfill the temporary vacancy. For example, kids schools, colleges, training institutions etc.
8. All our modules are used to communicate with end users to professionals but this doctor module is to communicate with professional and company. This doctor module is goes beyond that. It is between to professionals to companies.
9. Companies will always have bigger contracts so they have consistent vacancy for professionals. They will have permanent proffessionals with them. When there is deficiency or professional is off then they can fulfill their slots using this module.
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OK that is the doctor module discussion. When we speak about the company, i would like to point few points here.
10. As i quated already this PriceFinder can be used by companies who have professionals with them. For example, Spa is company. They will have professionals with them. Our business model is empowring the service business with our tools that can be used by companies for their daily work. For this, we will provide them POS for company which facilitate the owner to create profile for each of their professional and professional can have their own calender. Once job is done, payment will go to company. This profile created either by company or individual lasts forever even though they quit that company because we need to have their reviews rating forever.
11. Suppose if Spa wants to fillfill the temporary vacancy then they can post the job on PriceFinder and hire professionals. Here one thing to note that. When company hire professionals it is based on slots and days so there might be minimum 2 to 3 days work. They cannot hire the professionals like how end user book. It is just to denote the difference between general public from company.
I hope i explained how indivudual and company can work with PriceFinder platform.
12. I am trying to get around 50 professionals with Rs.1500 each for each locality. It includes all like call driver, cabs, ac mechanics, electrician, mechanics, painters, plumbers, carpenters etc. I think we can easily get around 50 professionals on board with our tools and marketplace.
13. If we target around 1 lakh for each locality. Then in Chennai alone we can get revenue around 50 Lakhs per month as there are 50 localities in this metropolitican city alone.
14. If you calculate the whole India, it is huge.
15. We need to have powerful tools to approach the service professionals to get them on board. For the 1500,
we need to give more value than their subscription fee. POS for billing to run their business, website for their branding with booking option, marketplace listing for new jobs so when we give all these values they can give 1500 per month without any hesitation.
16. Currently they are completely lack of tools. They are keen to use proper systems to run their business systatmatic so this is the right time to attract them by our tools.
17. Actually service business is different. Here skill and man power is assets to sell. So, our website needs to have proper booking, messaging, invoice, payment features.
18. My aim is to simplify the tools by just swiping the Start and End buttons to calcuate the hours and to generate invoice. So there is 0 learning curve for professionals. In India, payments are lot simple by UPI and it is preferred among the customers so we can use the same payment gateway in PriceFinder. Payouts are immediate for professionals.
19. By using our app, professionals tell these things to general public that:
– Their avilablity
– Their service fee
– Their reviews
Based on these customer can book the professionals.
20. By using our app, customers can benefit low fees, find the skillful professional, book when ever they want. If they have any issues they can visit our local office any time. It gives the confidence to customer that they can contact us through physical place also.
21. By providing various services under one brand, we can make customer dependent on us. Also customers wants to keep all their order record and serve them perfectly.
22. My suggestion is, we need to go with as much as possible categories to cover wide variety of professionals so that we can board most people at short time. If we target few categories then it is hard to reach widely. If possible we can implement physical stores within this phase 1 development.
23. Why i am talking about the physical store is, the online store is more useful for them to list their products. In india, physical stores are selling through Whatsapp and phone calls. If we introduce them POS billing software with online store option definetly they will like. Also it will be help us to acheive our goal to reach paid customers quickly.
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advance – 2L
computer – 3L
office setup – 1L
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Operation cost for each month:
4 developers – 3.5 L
My salary – 60K
Rent – 15000
Eb – 5000
Internet – 3000
Other – 5000
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4.5 L each month.
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6×4.5 – 27 L
setup – 6 L
Totally it will cost around 33 L to develop this product.
I aim 1000 businesses in first month which will give around 15L for first month.
developer salary – 1.5 L
rent – 15000
my salary – 60000
Eb- 5000
Internet – 3000
Other – 5000
Marketing salary – 1L
Support salary – 1L
Call center – 20K
Server – 15K
Google map – 20K
Total operation cost after launch per month – 5L so total revenue is 10L for first month. If 1000 not acheivable for first month atleast we need to acheive 500 businesses for first month so that we get profit 2.5 L. If 500 is not acheivable atleast we need to acheive 350 businesses for first month which will give profit 25000 without any loss. From the next month this limit will be increased gradually so profit will increase.
Partnership:
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By creating one app, we do business in two countries that saves lots of money and effort. Also we are ready to give our company share to you for invested money. In the profit, we give you the share each month.
If you start the company in UK with our PiperEdge same like India that would be great.
Targeting Practo
In India, there is a webportal called Practo.com which works with Doctors by providing app to doctors to let them add their avaialbity and manage the appointents done through their Practo.
They simply sinc the app and website like how we are trying to sync pos to marketplace. Practo acts as health care marketplace and their app works as pos. As i said earlier we need to give app kind of pos to any service provides to let them add their availablity calender and to check the appointements so that we can offer the booking option to customers. Without knowing the doctors availablity the website is nothing so that they first developed app for doctors and then next they created directory kind of listing marketplace sites. Now all doctors are coming because their competotors are listed in the website and they are ready to to online appointment so once we do the things fundenmatally then we can add marketplace on top of it.
They are not only listing doctors and clinics but labs, medicines as addon service but addon service is not listing third party providers. They partnered with other labs and medicals and they directly take order.
In Practo health care marketplace, people used to check the consultation fee, doctors services, cost for surgeries etc. Our PriceFinder exactly match with this. As i said earlier, we are generic one. We can add any number of categories into our website.
My idea is, we need to expand our footfall across the categories so that we can get more subscription fee instead of targeting just one niche as our name suggests common across the industries.
Apollo Model
When we move through the Dotpe business model means we are going to provide the omni channel retail expereience to retailer.
It can be physical store, online store, app, social media where ever it is, the customer and store details are moving along with them.
I will explain further here. For example, if customer see the promotion on social media and click on mobile app to order and can pick the things in store, yes that can be done by managing the one inventory across the mediums that is power of omnichannel retail. Approaching the customer through various medium to sales get done, it is called omni channel.
If customer wants to know availablity of product in the neighberhood store then they can check through the mobile app and visit to purchase.
In the retailer perspective, they just need to manage only one inventory across pos, mobile app, online store, marketplace, social media that helps him less intervention to manage the online mediums.
Phone order is also possible here, if they customer don’t have access to any online medium. Here in India, still phone is used to booking the services such as call taxi, cab driver. IVR is used to book or retrive the details.
So, we use all the medium to get the customer for businesses.
What is the USP comparing to Shopify and others:
1. Online to Offline (o2o) such as store pickup is main thing
in dotpe model. By inviting customer to retail shop more purchases are possible.
2. Strong offline business tools such as POS and seamless integretion with online tools such as mobile app, online store.
3. As we have our own marketplace, we can list the merchant catalogs based on the locality which helps customers to find the products in neighberhood store on one search so they can order either through marketplace or can pickup from physcial store.
4. Multi outlet options. Here we provide super user option to merchant to view all the transactions across the store.
5. Currently merchants wants to show the offers in living social or Groupon sites to get more attention from customers. These options can be given using our marketplace website with Offers page.
I imagine this as Retail ERP that consist of account, hr, contact center, etc to satisfy the small and medium retail stores. It will be one stop solution for merchants from POS to Contact center. Accounts to HR.
Why i am bringing all these feature is, integretion is painful process across the platforms. Here in India, merchants are still little bit hesitant of online store even though Internet penetration is very good. It is because flaw in fundamental. I blame their POS system. It is offline tool and it is done 2 decades ago which does not have API or Online connection so merchants are locked in this system. If we change their root issue by providing modern POS then they can easily come to online, mobile app, marketplace, social media etc.
You can see the advertisement in retails shops that they undertake Whatsapp order. It means you need to send the list to their whatsapp number then they will fulfill the order. There is still potential to sell our product to customers in India as well as UK.
I end this with one example, it will be helpful for you understand why Dotpe kind of technology is essential for every business at the moment :
Here in India, there is popular healthcare provide called Apollo. Initially they started hospitals for elite people. Based on the brand, all the rich people moving toward them. At one time, they started small clinics across the locality. It is not that big but five or six doctor with hifi lab and medical. It is very hygeine.
At one point they started to lure the middle class people by using their brand. For which they used the technology. To expand their terriorty, they started Apollo Medicals not just in Chennai or any other metro politican city. They started medicals with clever option that is when ever you buy the medicine you get 10% cash back. This cashback and discount was only on online sites. No retailer used these kind of cashback for physical store. For example if you buy for Rs.100 then 10 is cashback. This cashback will be accumated in customer account. They can either discount this 10% while buying medicine or accumate them in their account. By using that accumalated amount they can buy medicines. They have used modern POS and connected all the outlets across India so you can buy or redeem from your account from the neighberhood Apollo medicals.
Apart from brand value, people liked the technology which facilitated them to buy from only one medical which offers 10% discount and get cashback and then use that cashback amount at some time. Can you belive that there are 4500 Apollo medicals acorss the India.
Other merchants are lack of this technology. Currently only technology companies can start the startup to implement these technologies so that i wanted to change this. Any merchant who is not aware of technology can also compete with startup technology. We need to give them tools which will enahnce their business with one inventory across the channels. If they want to expand their brand to other locality yes they can do using our tools like how big corporates are doing. To fulfill this space we need to fetch technology.
In Apollo pharmacy, they have biometric machines to log the employee attendence based on that payment is paid. They use accounts, hr tools, contact center, app, online portal everything revolving around inventory. That is why i wanted to give all these facilities to merchant to directly compete with corporate brand.
One more thing, we discussed about the verified professional for service industry if booking is done thorugh our marketplace. If we go with dotpe model first then we don’t need this verified option because booking option is done through their client website if no longer activate service industry into our marketplace. We just sell our tools to service industry and physical stores first.
Thoughts before going to discussion with Eby & Michael:
Hi Eby and Micheal,
I discussed with colleagues and field experts about starting the app for Nigeria market and UK market with one app. It is really difficult to bring two different country regulations into one app as it is related to payment gateway so they suggest going with one app for one country first.
So, I would like to go with India first at the moment. I am afraid of implementing other countries without knowing regulations and demands, also it requires more manpower to make the changes. Each and every functionality to go with another country needs a vast amount of hours to amend so that we would like to go with one market at a time.
India’s half of transaction is done with UPI(unified payment interface) you can understand the penetration of UPI and market cap of UPI. India’s largest conglomerate Reliance is going to implement the POS for third party merchants to expand their retail store footprint to beat amazon and flipkart (walmart) because Amazon and Walmart cannot open fulfilment centres. The Indian government only allows Indian citizens to open ecommerce marketplace to make fulfilment centres that makes larger opportunities for Indian entrepreneurs.
Amazon already reduced their investment in India due to restrictions. India’s own marketplace Reliance Jio Market will capture the market in one or two years and they are experimenting with POS for merchants. In my opinion, this is the right time to start PriceFinder.IN because once we succeed in the market and capture good shares then there is a chance we are acquired by Reliance for a good amount.
Why I am saying with much confidence is, initially Amazon started their business as a price comparison site for products in the name of ‘Junglee’ and then they entered into the market in India as amazon.in. Indian people always have a tendency to check the price in price comparison sites before making a decision to buy products. When we enter the market with generic term PriceFinder.IN(i registered this a couple of years ago) then we have much exposure to a large audience. Currently price comparing sites compare prices of products that are available in Flipkart, Amazon, and other popular marketplaces. But our plan is totally different. We are going to show the listing of local players so there is much chance to grab the attention from Reliance which is trying to capture local players through POS.
Why PriceFinder.IN needs to be a neighbourhood app.
This pricefinder idea was born when I was unable to locate where the product is available in Chennai city and when I need that product in the next one or two hours, it is really not possible even nowadays. Because i cannot even find where the product is available so it is not possible how it can be delivered within one or two hours.
Although Amazon gives the one day delivery they have a delivery window within a timeframe also we cannot expect delivery within said time. It may go beyond expected hours so it is a frustrating experience to people who want the product or service immediately who live in a metropolitan city.
Few app players are here in Chennai to meet the requirement like grocery, vegetables kind of few categories. Please note that people will always prefer to order the items from the shop that they visited and purchased previously because it is the usual behaviour of the human mind of trust. When they don’t see the shops they visited already, they believe in the marketplace brand who have delivery persons and manage the trade between customer and merchant like how people trust Amazon.
The one hour delivery is possible only by marketplace because businesses don’t have that much human resources to deliver the order. Marketplace hires huge human resources to work under them as delivery partners, for each order they will get some commision in addition to the salary.
So, it is clear that if we want to run a marketplace for physical products then we need to have huge human resources as delivery partners to deliver the products to customers within one hour.
Delivery partners are dedicated people who work for a monthly salary. I had an idea to overcome this by dragging the gig workers to fulfil the delivery. We are going to use technology so we have to create a category called temporary workers aka gig. When an order is placed by a customer they will have an option to book express delivery like next one hour or they can book delivery as Gig delivery. This option opens a market for those who want to earn a few bucks for small works such as picking up a delivery from the mentioned store and delivering that product to the mentioned user, for that they will be given a few bucks.
Using Gig workers for delivery is a new idea in India. We don’t need to hire dedicated people for delivery purposes and we can just go with the pay as you go model with Gig workers. Anyone can participate in this Gig model. Even our service providers such as plumbers, carpenters, electricians can participate in this model when they have free time.
Why Gig workers
When I registered PriceFinder.IN a few years back, I intended the website as a price comparison site. Later when i saw the pain point to locate the product and finding the pricing in the neighbourhood then i intended to target Gig workers. They are PriceFinders. If anyone wants to know about the price of product and availability of product then Gig workers can visit the place and find the price on behalf of customers. They connect the businesses and customers at one point, also in India people are ready to work part time if we provide proper tools and can try to participate in this program once we launch. The POS software is playing a vital role for our project. If it is retail then it is billing software, if it is with service providers then it is booking software, if it is with general people then it is Gig software. Definitely it will be a USP for our work.
How to convince merchants
Going back to merchants, pricing plays a vital role. Also they will be sceptical of uploading those large SKU into our system. If they don’t update the stock quantity then everything will fail so we want to go inside the shop as POS software to sync the availability and stock updates to the online marketplace.
So, how to convince the merchant to use our pos software? This is what we tell them: you can get a beautiful website for your store. Store owners now have much freedom to list their product on their own website and they can insist their regular customers to order through their own website. Currently Dotpe provides websites for merchants with just catalogue visibility but we are going to provide the pages options so they can create information about us, contact us, services page, portfolio page etc with template design.
When the order is made on a client website or marketplace then they don’t need to deliver the order to the customer, it is PriceFinder.IN will take care by using dedicated delivery partners or gig workers. Here I would like to mention another option for delivery. There are companies who provide delivery service from one place to another place for a small amount of cost. We can connect their service through API but the challenge is, if we manage our own delivery we can have authority over a person but if we provide to third party service providers there can be unwanted delays and excuses which will damage our reputation so that i ignore that option.
When we are going to replace their existing pos software, I was afraid initially because in India most of the business users are using Tally ERP for their business. This software has been here for around 2 decades but after my research I found that Tally ERP is not used by any business owners but accountant and auditors to prepare the balance sheet and other details so my doubt on this is cleared recently. So, we are replacing the retail stores/service providers softwares with our POS entirely.
Pricing Strategy
Our PriceFinder.In will fit into these categories:
Price comparison site
POS Software
Website
Marketplace
Gig Service
Offline to Online (QR Code)
Our app will fit in all these categories in India. I am mentioning India here because we have domain pricefinder.in and handle facebook.com/pricefinder, twitter.com/pricefinder. If we go with pricefinder.com the domain alone costs around 1 million USD that is why i go with PriceFinder.IN first. All the setup exactly matches India. Actually India is a price conscious market but I wonder if there are around 38000 Shopify stores in India who pay a minimum of 2200 per month for subscription. After I saw these Shopify numbers I have much confidence about our product. Shopify does not provide any pos, marketplace option for the price of 2200 but they are charging extra amount for these features. So, people have buying power to run their ecommerce stores through subscription here.
IN regards to pricing, I initially thought to fix 1500 per month. But I see that it is a little bit higher in India. If you look at Canva.com they charge Rs.4000 per year with 100GB storage. I researched various sites. If the pricing is more than Rs.500, people will not buy the subscription. So, I would like to go with Rs.500 for all this software. Instead of going per person we can go with 10, 20, 30 headcount. For example, it is Rs.500 for a company who has around 10 employees. Rs.1000 for a company who has around 20 employees etc. I don’t like enabling and disabling the features based on the pricing model as well. So, for Rs.500 one retail shop/company/freelancer can have access to all the features irrespective of plans. No restrictions on features at all.
Also we can give a trial for one or two months but no need to give free accounts because I have been using a couple of SAAS products as a free user for the last 10 years, i have not upgraded to premium plan so far. It is really a burden to that company. Usually SAAS companies provide these Free options to reach a wider audience with intention about at one point a free customer can upgrade their plan. But in India, people won’t upgrade so the India Free plan won’t work. That is why we can reduce the paid subscription by 1 to 3 to reach a wider audience instead of wasting our resources on free users.
Usually SAAS product companies started in India target the US market because they can pay for subscriptions for the right product based on headcount. That is why I plan to launch the same app under a different name for the international market as a competitor for Wix, Square, Shopify platform.
The reason why US startups succeed is because there is a 300+ Million market but India is 5 times bigger than that. Also half of GDP transactions are done through QR code so if there is an idea for a startup then there is no better time than now. It is easy to introduce QR related softwares to Indians because they are already familiar with it and if we fulfil their current demand with familiar technologies then we can succeed.
We are at an early stage of startup to create the website/app. We have just an idea and clear plan on how to execute but we have no customers and revenue so we need investment to develop this app first. We plan to develop this app in house with around 10 team members with a time frame of 6 months. For the development alone we required roughly around 1 Cr rupees. After developing the app, we need to market, set up offices locally, customer support, field workers, and app maintenance for the next year. We need roughly another 1 Cr. So, totally 2 Crores needs to be invested to develop and market.
We will cover almost most of the modules in service and retail because we need to get more subscription customers. Khata book the Indian app has around 5 L customers for the service. It is just a bookkeeping app but our product is very convenient and we can reach a much wider audience. If you calculate for Rs.500 for around 5 Lakhs subscription it will go around 25 Crore rupees as a Monthly Recurring Revenue.